vbestate save causes hang on some systems

[Paul Norton]

Pentium 3 650
512 Megs of Ram
Latest updates of Ubuntu Hoary
Kernel 2.6.8 and 2.6.10 affected

System boots kernel and starts processes, when it comes to start ntp processes
the system freezes. Happens with both kernels listed above. This happened
after I upgraded to Hoary, and rebooted my system aftert apt-get was done upgrading.

[Paul Norton (paul-norton)]

Dell Inspiron 5000 Laptop

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Pentium 3 650
> 512 Megs of Ram
> Latest updates of Ubuntu Hoary
> Kernel 2.6.8 and 2.6.10 affected
>
> System boots kernel and starts processes, when it comes to start ntp processes
> the system freezes. Happens with both kernels listed above. This happened
> after I upgraded to Hoary, and rebooted my system aftert apt-get was done
upgrading.

I assume that you mean it freezes at the point where it says "Synchronizing
clock to ntp.ubuntulinux.org"; if not, please clarify.
Does the system come up if you select the old (Warty) kernel from the GRUB menu?

Try the debugging instructions at
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/DebuggingSystemCrash and see if you can get a
trace showing where it is failing.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Hmm, come to think of it, immediately after ntpdate runs, S52vbesave starts on
Hoary. I suspect this is the source of your trouble.

[Paul Norton (paul-norton)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > Pentium 3 650
> > 512 Megs of Ram
> > Latest updates of Ubuntu Hoary
> > Kernel 2.6.8 and 2.6.10 affected
> >
> > System boots kernel and starts processes, when it comes to start ntp processes
> > the system freezes. Happens with both kernels listed above. This happened
> > after I upgraded to Hoary, and rebooted my system aftert apt-get was done
> upgrading.
>
> I assume that you mean it freezes at the point where it says "Synchronizing
> clock to ntp.ubuntulinux.org"; if not, please clarify.

yes that is what i meant

> Does the system come up if you select the old (Warty) kernel from the GRUB menu?

No

>
> Try the debugging instructions at
> http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/DebuggingSystemCrash and see if you can get a
> trace showing where it is failing.

[Paul Norton (paul-norton)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Hmm, come to think of it, immediately after ntpdate runs, S52vbesave starts on
> Hoary. I suspect this is the source of your trouble.

what is vbesave?

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

When the system is hung, does the caps lock light work correctly?

[Paul Norton (paul-norton)]

(In reply to comment #6)
> When the system is hung, does the caps lock light work correctly?
>

No

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

Ok, can you do the following:

On boot, press escape to obtain the grub menu. Highlight your kernel and press
"e". Go down to the third line (it should look something like "root=/dev/hda2"
with some other stuff) and press e. At the end of the line, add an extra space
and then add

init=/bin/bash

and press enter. Press b. The system should now boot to a prompt. Type the
following:

mount -o rw,remount /
chmod a-x /etc/init.d/vbesave
sync
umount /

and then press ctrl+alt+delete. Does your system now boot?

[Paul Norton (paul-norton)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Ok, can you do the following:
>
> On boot, press escape to obtain the grub menu. Highlight your kernel and press
> "e". Go down to the third line (it should look something like "root=/dev/hda2"
> with some other stuff) and press e. At the end of the line, add an extra space
> and then add
>
> init=/bin/bash
>
> and press enter. Press b. The system should now boot to a prompt. Type the
> following:
>
> mount -o rw,remount /
> chmod a-x /etc/init.d/vbesave
> sync
> umount /
>
> and then press ctrl+alt+delete. Does your system now boot?

Yes! It boots now!!

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

Ok. That narrows down what the problem is - now we just need to see if we can
avoid it :)

Can you switch to a text console (ctrl+alt+f1) and do the following:

sudo vbetool vbestate save >/tmp/vbestate

and let me know if it hangs your machine?

[Paul Norton (paul-norton)]

(In reply to comment #10)
> Ok. That narrows down what the problem is - now we just need to see if we can
> avoid it :)
>
> Can you switch to a text console (ctrl+alt+f1) and do the following:
>
> sudo vbetool vbestate save >/tmp/vbestate
>
> and let me know if it hangs your machine?

Yes, it does hang my machine.

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

Could you download the package from:

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~mjg59/vbetool/vbetool_0.2-1debug_i386.deb

and install that, and then repeat the same test from a text console? It ought to
slowly print messages. Could you let me know what the last message it prints
before the machine hangs is? (I'm assuming that you never get your shell prompt
back)

Thanks,

[Paul Norton (paul-norton)]

The last thing it says before it freezes up the system..

Attempting to save video state
[goes to next line -- FREEZES]

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

*** Bug 12580 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

In view of the upcoming preview release, I see little choice but to default to
SAVE_VBE_STATE=false in acpi-support.

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

As I said, making this conditional on ACPI_SLEEP being true should have the
desired effect.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

*** Bug 12580 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

(In reply to comment #17)
> As I said, making this conditional on ACPI_SLEEP being true should have the
> desired effect.

I don't see where you said that in any of the relevant bug reports, but thanks.

Thom, please make sure that this fix is made for preview.

[Thom May (thombot)]

 acpi-support (0.19.1) hoary; urgency=low
 .
   * Ensure that we only attempt to save vbe state if ACPI_SLEEP is enabled